


Buried

by domini_moonbeam



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Immortal Husbands, M/M, Romance, Violence, moody bad booker has regrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:54:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25424224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domini_moonbeam/pseuds/domini_moonbeam
Summary: Early days. Booker is not handling immortality well and gets drunk and steps over the line with Nicky. Joe walks in. Lots of feelings!
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 130
Kudos: 1341





	1. Chapter 1

“Nicholas,” Sebastien rolled his name around and walked across the chateau sitting room, toward where the other immortal was seated near the fire.

Nicholas flipped the page of the book he was reading, glancing up briefly and then rolling his eyes and going back to reading. “You are drunk again.”

“I am,” Sebastien agreed, both of them speaking French because Sebastien had not yet learned any other tongue. He was not taking immortality well. Even he knew it. His wife had died five years ago but it still felt like yesterday. He swayed, the world tipping and he almost lost his legs.

Nicholas sighed, annoyed, and ignored him.

He suddenly hated that.

He grabbed the book out of his hands and threw it across the room.

Nicholas didn’t even look phased, just sad for him. Of course, he was sad for him.

“We should leave France for a while,” Nicholas suggested conversationally, as though they were friends and not damned souls bound together by eternity.

“I do not want to leave,” Sebastien spat.

“Well, I do not want to stay,” Nicholas countered. “We can talk to Joseph and Andrea when—” he started to rise from his seat, ending the conversation. Perhaps he would retrieve his book? Or just leave?

Sebastien shoved him back down into his chair before he could get up, surprising even himself. Some small, sane part of his brain was yelling at him to stop, to back off, but his body felt wild, hot, immortal, and dulled by so much wine that he was drowning. Drowning. That was exactly how he felt. Andrea too. But not Nicholas and Joseph.

Nicholas shot him a warning glare.

“I have seen you,” Sebastien slurred his words.

Nicholas raised one imperious eyebrow and Sebastien hated him then—hated him for being so calm, so okay, so happy in this life.

“I have seen you with him,” he continues.

Nicholas actually smiled then, leaning back into his chair and looking up at Sebastien where he towers over him. “We have never hidden anything from you.”

“I saw you on your knees for him.” He couldn’t stop himself. The jealousy of someone having some semblance of peace driving him mad.

Nicholas didn’t stop smiling, but it didn’t touch his eyes anymore. He would remember that later, when he was full of shame and regret. His imbecile mind had said the man was smiling. But he knew later that Nicolo di Genova had many smiles and _that_ was not a happy one. He would crawl on his knees and beg forgiveness in days that followed. He would put the bottle away for a time and he would leave France with them for something else, for war and purpose, anything to apologize. And when he did not think he could be humbled any more than he was, Nicolo di Genova would forgive him and treat him like a brother again.

“I saw you—” he started to grind out the words, ready to get descriptive, to drag a reaction out of the other man.

“Be careful,” Nicholas warned, the firelight in his eyes.

Sebastien reached out, fast, fisting his hand in the back of Nicholas’s hair and dragging his face forward, shoving away a hand that tried to stop him and pulling until he had that face pressed to the front of his pants. He twisted his hair, ripping at it to force his neck to crane so he could still see his face. He wanted something to break in those eyes, to remind of his own maybe, but they were colder than ever. “Maybe I want that too,” Sebastien growled. “Maybe if everyone had your mouth to—”

A door closed behind him, footfalls entering the chateau and then coming to a stop. Sebastien was too slow to move though, still staring down his own body at the face of his friend held violently against his crotch.

“Nicolo?” Joseph bit out the name, a thousand questions in that one name, a thousand messages that only they understood. It was like salt in a wound.

Nicholas bared his teeth at Sebastien, honestly angry then, and he never even saw the knife. But God, he felt it. Nicholas sliced through the artery in his thigh, cutting deep to drop him to his knees and then slitting his throat on his way to stand from his seat. The world went dark before he even landed.

* * *

Joseph stood just inside the room.

Andy was in the kitchen putting things away.

For a second he had just stared, not sure what to make of the scene. He could see Sebastien’s back, Nicholas in the chair in front of him and leaned forward, head blocked by Sebastien’s hips. It was a potentially provocative sight, but not for a second did he think his Nicolo would betray him. They had never discussed monogamy. Never had that conversation in all their centuries. But they had also never been interested in anyone else. And if his Nicolo was interested in someone, especially this sad French man, he would know.

“Nicolo?” he asked, not liking what possibilities were left for this moment. He was seconds from taking fast steps across the room and hauling Sebastien off his feet. He might even throw him through the window into the garden. All it would take was a sound from Nicholas, or a twitch of distress.

Neither came.

Sebastien landed hard on his knees and Nicholas cut open his throat as he stood, knife flicking away just as quickly as it had appeared.

Joseph crossed the room as Sebastien slumped onto the floor, his gaze only on Nicholas. Those blue eyes met his, a storm behind them, and his hand came up to comb fingers through his messed up hair, trying to press it back into place and hook it behind his ear. Joseph’s hand followed his, touching strands and helping to tame them, his gaze scanning his partner’s face for bruises or marks of any kind. He would have to be quick if he meant to see them before they healed. He didn’t ask what had happened. He waited.

“He is having one of his fits,” Nicholas shrugged.

Joseph frowned. His Nicolo was too kind. “What did he do?”

“Nothing,” Nicholas sighed, trying to soothe him before he even found out. He pushed at Joseph’s waist, nudging him toward the narrow hallway leading to their bedroom.

He paused when they both heard the man on the floor take a breath and roll onto his back with a groan of pain.

Nicholas held up a finger, asking for a moment of patience before taking two steps back to lean over Sebastien. He scowled down at him, no kindness in his face then. Sebastien whined, panting and apologizing, one arm reaching up as though for mercy.

It soothed some part of Joseph, just a tiny bit. At least the fool knew he had overstepped—even if Joseph did not yet know how exactly he had overstepped. Had he been flirty? Sebastien had spent much of his immortal life drunk and was rarely flirty.

“Try that shit again and I will bury you, _literally_. I will leave you in the ground to dig yourself out,” Nicholas said, his voice cold. That was not the voice he would have used in response to flirting.

He turned away from Sebastien and Joseph stepped aside, letting him leave the room first. He stared at Sebastien on the floor long enough to see him curl up in a miserable heap.

When he followed in their room, Nicholas was lighting the lamps.

“Tell me what he did,” he said clearly. He knew the only reason Nicholas was hesitating to tell him was because they had to live with this man—he was one of their own. But that was even more reason he had to know. He told himself he could try to be forgiving. Perhaps he had offended Nicolo? No easy task but Sebastien could find the right wounds to jab at. He knew them well enough for that.

Nicholas sighed and shook his head. “It’s not a big deal. I killed him.”

Joseph waited.

Nicholas looked away, annoyed and then nodded. He was pissed. He was trying to hide it, but he was and Joseph could see it no matter how he tried. “He was angry, drunk, and trying to be lewd. He wanted to upset me.”

“He _did_ upset you,” Joseph agreed, still waiting.

Nicholas finally stared back at him and said it, fast and monotoned, like speed and lack of emotion would dull it. “He pushed me down in the chair, grabbed my hair, and held my face to his crotch. He was just about to suggest I blow him when you walked in.”

Joseph stared at him and almost laughed. Almost. And then he turned for the door. He was going to choke the life out of that piece of shit.

Nicholas caught his arm and pulled him back, taking a step into him to press him up against the wall. His blue eyes pinned him there, shaking his head gently. “Let it go.”

“Are you insane?” Joseph demanded, sliding in Arabic.

“He was drunk,” Nicholas followed him.

“That is no excuse! He had no right—”

“I want to be done with it,” Nicholas interrupted, in Italian now. “I made my point. I killed him. I handled it.”

Joseph swallowed whatever he’d thought to say, staring back at the love his life and nodding finally. “Yes. You handled it,” he agreed, touching Nicholas’s waist. “Forgive me. I did not mean to offend you.”

Nicholas sighed. “You never need my forgiveness.”

Joseph shook his head gently and leaned forward to touch their foreheads. “Yours is the only forgiveness I will ever need. But I hope to need it very rarely.”

Nicholas smiled a little, always a sucker for Joseph’s pretty words.

“Do you want to leave now or tomorrow?” he asked, willing to go in the night if Nicholas did not want to sleep here. Instead, he looked at him curiously, one eyebrow raising. Joseph groaned. “You do not mean to stay here. We can leave. We can meet up with Andrea whenever she wants to start the next—”

“We are supposed to be together. We belong together,” Nicholas interrupted. “Why else would we be haunted by dreams of each other?”

“Dreams can not touch you,” Joseph countered.

Nicholas kissed him, the kind of deep searing kiss that was meant to distract him from his own anger. It almost worked. It often did work.

“Nicolo…” he whispered, uneasy. “I do not trust him.”

Nicholas sighed and nodded. “I know. Nor do I. But he is ours so we will give him another chance.”

“And if he is still a piece of shit?”

“You heard me. I will bury him.”

Joseph groaned but relented. He couldn’t drag Nicholas away, no matter how much he wanted to sometimes. He respected him too much for that. He knew he could handle himself, he just never wanted him to be in a situation where he’d have to, especially not at home where they were supposed to be safe.

“Can I cut off his hand?” Joseph asked, keeping his tone light but they both knew it was not a joke.

“Only if you make it look like an accident.”

“Deal.”


	2. Accidental

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After some request for it, I added another part to this! Hope you enjoy it!

Joseph woke first, Nicholas in his arms and both of them safe in their bed. _Safe_. He rolled the word in his heart and found it no longer fitting. _Fucking Sebastien_. He kept replaying that look on Nicholas’s face, when his fingers were absently trying to put his hair back into place, tucking it behind his ear, like if he could get it back the way it was it would undo what had happened.

He dressed, restless, while his Nicolo was still in bed, reading. It wasn’t like him to stay in bed long. He was usually the first to stir in the house. But Joseph knew that he was lingering on purpose. He did that when he was uncomfortable with a situation. When he was still trying to be okay with something he wasn’t really okay with. So he didn’t comment on the behavior, he just kissed him again, told him he was more beautiful than the moon, and promised to be back by lunch.

He paused in the dining room on his way out.

“Where is he?”

Andrea frowned tightly and flipped the page of the paper in front of her on the table. “You know, you boys ruined the carpet in the living room.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.”

She looked up and he regretted the words. It made it sound like they were leaving them and not just this place.

“You’ve been talking about going to the Americas,” Joseph continued. He had never wanted to cause her unrest. She had never been the same since Quynh. “I’m going to look into tickets today and see when the next ship leaves.”

She stared up at him for a long while, waiting.

Joseph sighed. “Yes. The Frenchman is coming with us,” he conceded.

“He’s in the garden, drying out.”

Joseph snorted, doubting it. He leaned over the table to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be back soon.”

She hummed acknowledgement and he walked through the house, going out through the kitchen into the garden.

Sebastien was indeed outside, his back to the wall and his legs sprawled. His eyes were glassy and his head back, the sun on his face. Joseph slid his hands in his pockets to hide the fists they coiled into. He couldn’t help but imagine this man with his hand tangled in Nicholas’s hair, ripping strands out as he twisted, forcing his face up against his crotch so that he could spit lewd, mean, words down on him.

Sebastien started the second he noticed Joseph, scrambling to his feet and using the wall. He looked unhappy, not his usual mopey, dazed, self but in a livid and not at all drunk way. “Joe—” he started and then choked off whatever he meant to say when Joseph walked up to him. He braced himself. Perhaps expecting a gut punch or a knife to the heart.

“You remember, yes?” Joseph asked, using Sebastien’s French. This would be the last time he spoke French for him for nearly a century. After this conversation, Joseph would not care about Sebastien understanding him for a very long time.

The man nodded.

Joseph nodded and then he lifted and dropped one shoulder, still managing to keep his fists in his pockets. “So, why him?”

Sebastien’s tear wet eyes widened, gaze flicking up to his face. “I am sorry. I—”

“No.” Joseph bit out and shook his head once, forcing himself to smile politely even though there was nothing kind about the gesture. “Why did you do that to him? Why not me?”

Sebastien’s gaped, confused.

“Did you assume he was an easier target? That he wouldn’t kill you for it? That he’d do it?”

Sebastien cringed like he had been hit, swallowing hard and shaking his head. “No.”

“Did you imagine, because you seem to have seen him on his knees for me,” he quoted him. Joseph had asked his beloved to tell him, word for word, what had been said. For his own sanity. So that he would not imagine it more or less than what it was. And Nicholas had told him, giving him the complete run down like a report on a mission, still trying to assure him of how sad and drunk Sebastien had been—how it was to be forgiven with time—but he had not lied or shaved any details. He would not have done that. And so, Joseph could trust that it had happened exactly the way his Nicolo had said, no worse, and no less. “Did you think he was the only one of us that goes to his knees for the other? Did you think that made him weak?”

Sebastien groaned in pain and shook his head again. “Please, forgive me. I was drunk—”

“You were selfish and cruel.”

Sebastien swallowed hard and nodded.

Joseph started to take another step closer but stopped and settled back to this distance, just out of arms reach. “Tell me. Was it because you wanted him or was it because you wanted to hurt him?” he asked and this time waited out the silence between them for his answer. There was a right answer and a wrong answer.

Sebastien looked like he might throw up, leaning back against the wall again. A tear slid down his cheek. “I wanted him to hurt. He just…He was so okay and I was so far from it. It was wrong, Joseph, I know it and I am ashamed of myself. I don’t want to hurt him or you or anyone. I just…”

Joseph nodded tightly, hoping he would shut up now. If he had said it was because he had wanted Nicholas, he would never be able to be okay with him again—not for desiring his love, but for attacking him like that because of want.

He turned and started toward the end of the garden, ignoring Sebastien’s strained voice still apologizing to him. He stopped near the low fence, hand leaving his pocket and for a moment rubbing at the knot of nerves in his forehead. When he opened his eyes he spotted the woodpile.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Joseph added, tone even. He bent and snatched up the axe from the tree stump, turned on his heel and threw it end over end.

Sebastien looked up. He’d been grabbing the door frame, either for support or to will himself back into the house. The axe head landed in the frame and Sebastien jerked back, hand severed and landing on the stone path. He groaned and clutched the stub of his arm to his chest, bleeding out into his vest and sinking back down to his knees.

“If anyone asks, say it was an accident, yes?” Joseph called in a falsely pleasant tone before leaving the yard for the stables.

* * *

Nicholas came into the dining room, following the smell of coffee. He hadn’t realize he was tense about the idea of Sebastien being there until he relaxed when he wasn’t. She looked up from her paper and stared at him. He knew immediately that she knew everything that had happened—had probably gotten the information from Sebastien himself. They were drinking pals, after all. The broken heart club.

“Are you planning to be an Andrea or an Andrew when we go to the new world?” he asked, trying to make light conversation. They had played spouses many times back when Quynh was alive. They had been two couples pretending to be two couples. Those had been some of the best times of his life and he knew, with much heartache, that they had been some of the best of hers too.

“Do you want me to exile him?” she asked.

He almost groaned, looking away and studying the table instead. He frowned at the lacking spread. Coffee and whiskey. She would have died a thousand times from starvation if it weren’t for them. “Of course not,” he started across the room, pausing behind her chair when she held up a hand for him. He took it on second nature, lingering there when she held his hand to her shoulder.

“Nicky,” she whispered. “Do you want me to exile him? I will say it was my decision. You can even argue against it.”

He stared down at her, surprised for a moment though he shouldn’t have been. Of course she would do that. He lifted her hand and kissed it. “No. He didn’t do anything much.” He chuckled but it was thin, uncomfortable maybe. “I’ve survived much worse than being pushed around by our new boy.”

She turned in her seat and looked up at him, concern creasing her features. “We killed everyone else that ever dared.”

Nicholas chuckled and let go of her hand. “Well, that’s not an option.”

“Nicholas,” she used her firm voice and he sighed, stopping, frozen because he had never had it in him to dismiss her.

“I have decided to let it go. I give my word, I will not blow up any missions or leave the baby for dead,” he used a joking tone but meant it.

She sighed and nodded, reaching for her coffee.

He picked up the pot. “I’ll fix breakfast.”

“And more coffee?”

“Of course.”

She leaned back in her chair to call after him, watching him walk through the doorway into the kitchen. “Will you do that thing again?”

Nicholas smiled to himself, a real smile then. “That thing with your travel case on ship voyages?” He asked even though he knew.

“Yes!”

He put the coffee pot down on the kitchen island. “Of course.” He had taken to filling her travel case with baklava and fudge when they went on long journeys. He’d done it the first time just because he wanted to use up the ingredients before they left and her case was the only empty one. But it had become a strange sort of tradition.

He had just grabbed the loaf of bread and a knife when the backdoor swung open, the stink of blood and liquor wafting in on a cloud around the Frenchman.

Nicholas froze. Just for a second, but long enough for them both to notice. And then he put the bread down on the cutting board and started slicing it. “Clean up. There will be food and coffee soon.”

* * *

Sebastien stared at him. He was a mess and he knew it, still in his bloody clothes from the day before with a fresh coat soaking into the middle of his chest where he hugged his arm in the bundle of his jacket. “Nicholas,” he started, voice like gravel. “I apologize for my behaviour last night, it was inappropriate and uncalled for.” And all the words he’d tried to come up with were so lacking. He had thrown up after he told Andrea how he’d behaved, how he’d treated Nicholas. He had been hoping she would kill him too, but she hadn’t, she had just stared at him like they were strangers to one another.

He had gone for the wine, as though he could drown out a part of himself that had come from the drowning to begin with. He ended up smashing the wine and the whiskey. Andrea had snatched a bottle before leaving him to his misery outside for the rest of the night.

“Forget it,” Nicholas said, slicing bread, like he had dropped a cup and not attacked his friend. Not just attacked, assaulted, demeaned, harassed.

And it was so tempting to go along with it—to accept Nicholas’s blanket forgiveness and willingness to move on like it had never happened. He would absolve him just like that. And Sebastien didn’t doubt that he would live by it, he would do everything he could to pretend it hadn’t happened and treat him like normal. But he had frozen when Sebastien walked in. For a second he had held his breath and stared like he was assessing a threat. And why shouldn’t he feel that way?

“I won’t forget it,” he whispered.

Nicholas sighed, almost groaned, the knife settling against the cutting board and his eyes closing.

“And you haven’t forgiven me, not really.” He saw the way Nicholas swallowed, dragged in a breath and pressed back his shoulders. He was about to open his eyes, turn toward him, smile gently, and convince them both that he had. Because it was the right thing to do—the kind thing to do.

Sebastien sank to his knees before he could, replacing serene agony with surprise on the other man’s face. “I am so sorry, Nicholas,” he said clearly, because he desperately needed to be forgiven for this—truly forgiven no matter what that took or how long. And if he accepted that false peace, if he allowed Nicholas to bury this, it would never come because he would never deserve it. “You have always treated me so well. You have been patient and kind and I have never appreciated it.” He saw how Nicholas’s eyes widened a fraction when some of his tears escaped, sliding down his cheeks. He wasn’t ashamed to cry or to kneel—not after he had shamed himself last night beyond anything he could have previously imagined for himself. “I saw you, and your happiness, and your peace, and I wanted to take it from you. And I went after you, not Joe, because even mad with my own grief, a part of me knew you would forgive it. The only thing you would not have forgiven, is if I had treated someone you loved like that.”

Nicholas stared at him, honestly surprised.

“You can hate me as long as you need to,” Sebastien went on. “The only thing I ask, is that you not forgive me until you really do?”

Nicholas’s stare turned to a tight glare, the honesty in somehow better. He nodded once.

Sebastien exhaled, losing more tears and curling forward, his forehead touching the floor. “I swear, never again.”

Nicholas watched him for another second and then went back to preparing breakfast. “Get out of the kitchen. Go clean up.” There was no false cheer or politeness in it, but it wasn’t heavy with hate either. There was a rift between them, a rift Sebastien had put there, but he also had time to mend it.

He got up, awkward with one arm still to his chest. He left the kitchen and only realized what a mess he was when he walked through the pristine dining room, Andrea in a clean suit at the table.

She ran her gaze over him and raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck happened to your hand?” she asked, no particular note of care there but for her, asking was its own level of caring.

“It was an accident,” Sebastien answered and heard a snort of laughter from the kitchen.

Andrea shrugged. “We’re leaving for the west.”

“How far west?”

“As far west as the world goes, I guess.”

He nodded. He would not argue. He would go anywhere they went and he would make amends.


End file.
